[Discussion] Brexit means Brexit

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Discuss the political fallout and other issues around Britain's exit, Brexit for short, from the EU.

For the sake of clarity, I'm including the full text of Article 50.

Article 50 wrote:

1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.

2. A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.

3. The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.

4. For the purposes of paragraphs 2 and 3, the member of the European Council or of the Council representing the withdrawing Member State shall not participate in the discussions of the European Council or Council or in decisions concerning it.

A qualified majority shall be defined in accordance with Article 238(3)(b) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

5. If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49.

Why would a referendum be any more of a sh*t show than any other option? From across the pond it seems like a referendum held now would almost certainly reject Brexit altogether, now that everyone knows what it really means. Maybe it's just the coverage I'm seeing in the British press, but it looks to me like the only voters still supporting Brexit are extreme nationalists.

Agreeing what the question is will take a long time. What Brexit is being voted on, is there a series of options (problematic because it splits votes), is remain on the paper (already decided by referendum)?

There will still be a split vote. Pollsters predict very close either way. It is by no means only 'extreme nationalists' who would vote to leave and that language has entrenched some leave voters and it has been quoted as a weapon back against remainers ad nauseum 'we are not extremists and we aren't too stupid to understand what leave means'.

A referendum is too blunt a tool to resolve a complicated scenario.

If, as you suspect, it is a remain result then all hell will break loose from those who voted to leave, in this and the previous referendum, who will feel, I think legitimately, they have been cheated.

If there is a deal agreed by Labour and Conservatives which is then up for a confirmatory vote, what happens if it doesn't get approved? Remainers don't want it and neither do a lot of Brexiteers.

To my understanding current polling suggests most folk would vote as they did in the first referendum. So there's a strong chance a 2nd ref would go for leave again. The only polling that suggests a remain success in a 2nd referendum relies heavily on demographic changes since the 1st ref (i.e. many old leavers have died and younger folks are mostly for remain). But for that to be the outcome the under 25 vote would have to come out in force and they are the voting block with the lowest turnout.

I like to imagine that the first message sent across the internet in 1969 was "LOL your ping time sucks"

They should hold another referendum but with the options of what leaving the EU will really require:

Should the United Kingdom:
Stay in the EU
Leave with a Customs Union
Leave with a hard border in Ireland and invalidate the Good Friday Agreement
Leave with no deal who the f*ck knows what happens after that
...
etc.

Run that through their FPTP system and see what comes out.

With so many different version of Leave available they can't decide which one is the least f*cked up as they are all pretty f*cked up. They have committed to eating a sh*t sandwich but now trying to vote for the version that doesn't taste like poo.

They should hold another referendum but with the options of what leaving the EU will really require:

Should the United Kingdom:
Stay in the EU
Leave with a Customs Union
Leave with a hard border in Ireland and invalidate the Good Friday Agreement
Leave with no deal who the f*ck knows what happens after that
...
etc.

Run that through their FPTP system and see what comes out.

With so many different version of Leave available they can't decide which one is the least f*cked up as they are all pretty f*cked up. They have committed to eating a sh*t sandwich but now trying to vote for the version that doesn't taste like poo.

Actually, it's fairly simple:

Ultra remainers just want to remain. They can't get the support to unequivocally revoke article 50 (Which would also be political suicide given the referendum result) and so, probably after they've been peevishly told not to be so stupid by the more sensible remainers are pushing for a second referendum with remain as an option. In all honesty this is the best way to prevent Brexit, although it is one hell of a gamble. It allows another vote, circumventing the whole "It's not democratic" argument without having to have a General Election where both main parties want to leave the EU. Thanks to FPTP, other parties probably can't get the support they'd need to unilaterally revoke article 50 if they got elected.

Those moderate Brexiteers, who probably aren't fans of the idea but realise it would be political suicide to just ignore the result of the referendum are looking for the softest brexit possible, thus circumventing the tricky business of the Irish Border issue, keeping Scotland more or less on side (however grudgingly) and preventing break up of the union, and doing the least amount of damage to the UK economy and future outlook as possible, while still recognising there is no such thing as a good brexit. This probably represents the bulk of MPs in the house of commons.

Then there's Theresa May. She wants a Brexit that tries to balance the view of the moderates, while trying to appease the hard Brexit fanatics (who we'll come on to) She knows that in order to give Brexit voters what she thinks they "want" (no free movement of people, Legal Supremacy of UK law) we cannot be in the single market, or the customs union. She wants a deal with the EU they just can't give - access to the single market and CU without all the baggage. It was impossible before she even started, and now everybody hates her deal because it doesn't offer anybody anything they'd like.

The hard brexiteers seem to think the EU is playing a complicated game of Chicken, but they are Johnny Foreigner after all and they'll be sure to blink now it's down to the wire and give them what they want - no divorce bill, UK Parliamentary Sovereignty, and cherry picked access to the Single Market. They won't worry about the Customs bit as the EU well damn well do what it's told. They probably are only vaguely aware of the Irish issue, and frankly don't care because it's an Irish problem.

So, in order to reflect all that accurately, any second referendum would need to contain the following statements:

1. Sack it all off and remain in the EU after all.
2. Leave but so softly you sort of wonder why we're leaving in the first place.
3. Theresa Mays deal that doesn't give anybody what they want and nobody is going to agree with
4. No Deal.

Remain would win that hands down while the Brexit vote tears itself apart. Still, under the principles of FPTP it would an entirely fair referendum.

That's why it won't happen unless parliament can force the Governement to legislate against no deal. They took a step towards that tonight, even if it was only by 1 vote.

Category 2 is still hopelessly fractured as well, but at least they seem to have their eyes open. They just can't agree on some key details.

Are there any group 1 spokespeople that are as odious and blinkered as group 4? They don't seem to be getting much air time from where I sit, but I'm sure they are doing a terrible job too.

Probably depends on whether you think Vince Cable, Nichola Sturgeon or Chucka Umuna are ‘odious’. As they all represent minor parties in the eyes of the UK press, they just don’t get any airtime, compared to say Nigel Farage. Who represent no parliamentary party at all. It’s one of the major reasons we are in this mess in the first place.

Those moderate Brexiteers, who probably aren't fans of the idea but realise it would be political suicide to just ignore the result of the referendum are looking for the softest brexit possible, thus circumventing the tricky business of the Irish Border issue, keeping Scotland more or less on side (however grudgingly) and preventing break up of the union, and doing the least amount of damage to the UK economy and future outlook as possible, while still recognising there is no such thing as a good brexit. This probably represents the bulk of MPs in the house of commons.

If you mean moderate remainers I completely agree and surely our ultimate destination.

Sorbicol wrote:

...any second referendum would need to contain the following statements:

1. Sack it all off and remain in the EU after all.
2. Leave but so softly you sort of wonder why we're leaving in the first place.
3. Theresa Mays deal that doesn't give anybody what they want and nobody is going to agree with
4. No Deal.

This is why another referendum would be a problem. Choices 2-4 split the leave vote and anything not nailed down in detail will be endlessly argued after the vote.

I think a more likely vote would be:
1. Sack it all off and remain in the EU after all.
2. Leave on a deal supported by Conservative, Labour and the EU

We have a referendum result already confirming leave and Labour and Tory have said this is what they want to provide. The details of 2 will need to be defined before the referendum. That said, if we get to a stage where we have something agreed for 2 then there is no need for a vote but it might quieten hard brexiteers and help keep the Conservative party together after the referendum assuming it doesn't split apart during the negotiations.

They voted against hard Brexit, but voted for Fysh's proposal to immediately leave and then seek a tariff-free trade agreement with the EU, which I read as "Hard Brexit and Hope Europe Was Bluffing." So that's insane.

They were magnanimous enough to abstain on one of the customs union plans (I'm not clear on how Clarke's and Boles's plans differ. They were they decisive margin against Clarke's.) Apparently their position on a customs union changes from day to day: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern...

...and that's it. They vote against everything else.

I understand they're a single-issue party that wants Northern Ireland to stick with the UK, but I don't see what they're doing to help that cause. Obviously they hate the backstop in May's deal (and yet they complete her majority!), but do they really want to risk a hard Brexit and close the Irish border? Have they thought about where that leads?

This is why another referendum would be a problem. Choices 2-4 split the leave vote and anything not nailed down in detail will be endlessly argued after the vote.

That's kinda the point, isn't it? The leave vote is split along irreconcilable lines that are smeared about by lumping everything under one heading. There are completely different ideas of what leaving the EU even means, and a referendum ought to reflect that.

No. There has been zero attempt by the conservatives to build a cross party consensus on the Withdrawal agreement. That's because the agreement was designed first and foremost to stop the conservative party from tearing itself apart. It's abjectly failed to do so, and as May just about realises that a No Deal would be an unmitigated disaster, she's only now reaching out to Corbyn because she's out of other options.

She's also only reaching out to labour because she knows that despite everything, Corbyn also wants to leave the EU. Not on the terms she'd prefer, but at least he actively wants to leave. She can therefore happily blame the "softness" of any brexit deal on Corbyn, saving what little face she has left with her party and absolving herself of failing to deliver a hard brexit.

She won't deal with anyone else because she knows to even get them to the table, she'd have to include a second referendum with Remain as an option. With Corbyn, she might not despite seeking a second referendum being Labour Party policy.

So you are left with two brexiteer party leaders who are roundly despised by the majority of their parliamentary parties negotiating a deal nobody really wants. Again.

The damage to the UK economy due to Brexit has cost £66 billion ($86 billion) so far, and left the United Kingdom teetering at the brink of a new recession, according to economic data published last week.

An analysis by S&P Global Ratings analyst Boris Glass found that the decline of the pound, increase in inflation, erosion of household spending power, decline in house prices, and weak exports led to a 3% reduction in GDP. "That translates into average forgone economic activity of £6.6 billion (in 2016 prices) in each of the 10 quarters since the referendum," Glass said in a research note.

...

The lost £66 billion implies that the country is £1,000 poorer, per person, on average, than it would have been had the vote never taken place.

The decline is showing up in the real-life data, too. A weighted average of Purchasing Manager Index data — which correlates closely with GDP growth — implies that British GDP was exactly zero in Q1, according to Pantheon Macroeconomics analyst Samuel Tombs.

Like most of England, Southampton voted to leave the EU in 2016. The margin was 54% to 46%, which was about the average for England as a whole.

After the referendum, London-based news organisations sent reporters like me north, to the post-industrial heartlands that represented an England that had been - in the parlance of my trade - “left behind” by a globalised economy. But Southampton had not been left behind. Far from it. It had been swept along by the forces of globalisation for three decades.

Danny Babey is in his early 40s and runs his own upholstering company. A lot of his work is on the water, refurbishing private yachts. He voted to leave the EU.

“Why can’t we make our own rules?” he says as he noses his own yacht out of harbour. We chug past the vast container port that has grown up to the west of the city. “It’s not easy being told what to do by another country.”

I took a mental note of this, knowing that I planned to end my journey in Scotland, which voted 62% to remain but will have to leave with the rest of the UK regardless.

Danny tells me he’d recently sent 10 workers to do a job in Marseilles. “I suppose I might have to think about sorting visas for that sort of thing now,” he says. “But I hope the transition will be smooth.”

“Did you think about that when you voted to leave?” I ask him.

“Not really,” he says, “because I wasn’t doing that work then. I suppose that work might go to another company now, one that’s inside the European Union and yes, that would concern me. But I always take the view that something else will turn up.”

In the city centre that evening, Tomasz Dyl is in a bar with a dozen friends and colleagues, drinking champagne and slicing birthday cake. It is 11 years to the day since he founded his own marketing company. It now employs 10 people full time and has just opened an office in London’s Oxford Street.

Tomasz came to Southampton 15 years ago at the age of 13 without speaking a word of English. His Polish parents took low-paying jobs to give their children a better start, in a wealthier country.

Tomasz, a beneficiary of freedom of movement between member states, voted to remain and was sure Southampton would too.

Why didn’t it?

“At one point, Polish was Southampton’s second language,” he says, acknowledging the role that high levels of immigration played in the way many people voted. “The Poles were 10% of the population of the city. Most have done well. They started their own businesses. They’ve brought a lot to this country.”

For Tomasz, the immigrant experience has been a happy one. He talks about his adopted city in the first person plural. “We’re a very welcoming city,” he says. “We’re a port city. We’re used to people coming in and going out all the time.” He has almost no personal experience of anti-immigrant sentiment in a city he clearly loves.

Pearline Hingston is also an immigrant.

She came to Britain at the age of 11, from her native Jamaica, where she was born to a family of Indian descent. Her identity is shaped by the Commonwealth, she tells me, and she has been campaigning to leave the European Union for years. She is a UKIP branch secretary.

“We have waited long enough. We should leave, even on a no-deal. Britain can trade globally. We can trade globally on WTO terms,” she says.

“If the EU doesn’t want to stay friends, if it wants the UK to impose tariffs on its goods, then that’s its choice.”

Pearline - who also voted Out in the 1975 referendum to decide if the UK would remain in the EEC as it was then - is convinced Brexit is being sabotaged.

“The EU has the upper hand,” she says, “and there have been people here in parliament who have been tripping over to Brussels having private meetings, and they have become anti-British and anti-democratic in their behaviour. They should accept the referendum and not pull the rug from under Mrs May.”

For many here, Southampton’s Leave vote was not primarily about immigration. There is a “something will turn up” self-confidence - some might say complacency - about this England that is borne of experience: the experience of 40 years in which, compared with the England I’m headed to next, something usually has turned up.

It wasn't just the England of the “left-behinds” that tipped the scales for Leave in 2016. There was a numerically significant chunk of Leave votes from a non-metropolitan England that is relatively comfortably off.

This is what I take away from Southampton - if you’re a Remainer, it’s too simple to blame the poor or the North. A critical mass of Leave sentiment is in the South.

Although there are quite a few (predictable) pockets of stronger leave than remain areas in the UK, I think the majority of them are pretty much 50/50. Which is sort of the issue really when the referendum didn't care what constituency you were in, it just wanted to know the raw numbers.

I live right in that "Industrialised North". My constituency vote to remain by 51%

EU immigrants voting to leave strikes me as the same kind of madness as women and black people in the US Republican party. I don't understand the rationale behind voting against what seems so clearly in your best interest.

Gravey: "Feels weird to do it with something other than a finger."
Employee Profile | GOTY 2018 | Chumpy: Pineapples

European Council President Donald Tusk has given a press conference - confirming that the EU and UK have agreed a "flexible extension" to Brexit of six months until 31 October.

He says that during this time, the UK can still sign off Theresa May's Brexit deal and then leave earlier.

The UK is allowed to change the political declaration but not the withdrawal agreement, he said. He added that it is was still possible to cancel Brexit.

He ended with a message to the UK: "This extension is as flexible as I expected and a little bit shorter than I expected but it's still enough to find a best possible solution. Please do not waste this time."

Are we taking bets on whether they'll be a decision by that point, or if we'll be doing this whole ridiculous song and dance again in October?

I anticipate this exact same dog and pony show for the next 6 months with no agreement reached by anyone. I am not sure May will be in place for much longer though. They seem intent on removing her but at the same time keeping her around as the punching bag.